


Diamond in the Rough

by Kamaete



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Dave's Bro is actually a good bro in this one, No beta we die like mne, One Night Stands, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23606146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kamaete/pseuds/Kamaete
Summary: It's just a one night stand, but Karkat's diamond is brittle and his judgment a little skewed when he takes the strange human back to his hive.
Relationships: Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider & Karkat Vantas
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Diamond in the Rough

**Author's Note:**

> This was written... five? six years ago? We all know Dave's Bro was uh, not great, but it's my fic and i can do what i want. This is technically unfinished but... it works well enough on it's own I think unless the homestuck bug really gets me going again.

Sollux isn’t answering your texts. 

This wasn’t unexpected; the last four texts he sent you were actually the same text that your shitty phone split into four parts detailing his intense need for a program that did a thing why hasn’t someone done this already _all it’d take is a few hours and some elbow grease oh waiit_ –

That was a week ago. Which meant the program was more difficult than he expected (unlikely) or he’d gotten caught up in extra features and smoother interface and more reliable security measures (more likely). Just as likely, he probably hasn’t showered, slept for more than whatever he caught when he closed his ganderbulbs sitting in front of his husk top or even eaten something more nutritious than the easily accessible human made energy rations within reach of his desk.

If you lived within reasonable travel distance, or even had the funds needed to get there, you’d already be knocking on his entrance slab with the fury of a thousand angered stars.

You don’t and you haven’t so you aren’t.

You are, instead, pathetically drinking your woes human style at a cheap alcoholic distribution and social recreation center a few blocks away from your apartment.

You can’t even afford a block in a trollish styled communal hive, what with the human zoning laws and building permits, troll hives actually have a hell of a lot more thought put into them then they used to and the likes of you certainly couldn’t afford that.

You’ve acclimated rather well to human living, you think as you stare into the glass of–what was it again? Something Alternian, human intoxicants don’t do shit for you unless they’re fruit based and you don’t have the cash for that. Wild granular distilled liquid probably, it’s cheap and affects humans too. Anyways, acclimating.

Right.

You’ve pretty much been abandoned by the Alternian government. The moment you were conscripted you were immediately drop kicked with the pointy heel of aristocratic pomp onto this shitty planet and consequently discharged. 

The whole crew was. Service in the name of the Empire fulfilled honorably, incident on host planet removes need for further military officials, you are hereby removed from the line of duty. As you are currently outside of Military Jurisdiction no further assistance other then the required pension (monetary recompense in the equivalent amount of 6,000 ceagars, government scholarship to the nearest Alternian Sponsored Academy, the rations and equipment (barring government uniforms which must be returned within five perigees, violations will result in a fine of up to 1000 ceagars and/or a criminal investigation for impersonation of an Alternian Military Officer punishable by up to 7 sweeps in prison) issued to you) will be offered. 

Thank you, your sacrifice was essential to the continuation of our glorious Empire.

You didn’t even get a letter, your hand held electronic communication device had beeped then displayed the message about five hours after you’d exited Alternian space. Once your crew landed you were greeted by shockingly trollish aliens in suits and bored blue blooded adults who gave you a backpack (one (1) safety blanket, one (1) canteen of water, one (1) pair of boots, one (1) jacket, one (1) bottle of sopor replacement tablets (thirty six (36) individual tablets), your 6,000 ceagars in the equivalent human dollar amount, one (1) official discharge letter, one (1) voucher for a scholarship, and one (1) book entitled _Human Etiquette For The Newly Arrived Cullbait_ ), slapped you on the back and sent you on your way.

Unsurprisingly, the Alternian Military—newly banned from enacting many of its traditional punishments for being a loser due to negotiation terms from the Human Earth Coalition—decided the next best thing to culling was ditching their undesirables onto Human Earth in a wigglerish display of passive aggressive black flirting. 

You had been grateful for the sopor tablets when you had to sleep under a park bench, wary and unused to the new environment.

You’d been much more grateful for them when your cash ran out and the whole bottle got you three human grand and a criminal job as a runner for shifty troll drug dealers. 

Then you’d met Gamzee who’d introduced you to a handful of amenable high bloods who had connections to slightly more tolerable low bloods and you’d felt—You’d felt accepted, for once in your miserable life as the blister on the backside of life’s fat nasty trash ass. 

And then, through a couple sweeps of shenanigans (some not quite so fun as the word tends to imply) you landed a real, if low paying job as a completely legal errand boy after your relocation to Human Texas. Not that there is a Troll Texas, but if there was it would be infinitely superior and besides, you give yourself the right to be superior towards this shitty planet that doesn’t understand proper cinema but still somehow manages to give you a life scores better than what you’d ever be able to achieve on your home world, even if it’s internally.

You hope.

You don’t usually have a tendency to mutter your thoughts out loud.

You’ve been out of contact with the majority of your contact list for the last sweep or so and only Sollux ever regularly shoots the shit with you now. For whatever amounts to “regular” with that bipolar psionic freak. You’ve gotten out of practice of recognizing your own voice talking to other people.

You think about gesturing for another refill but you should probably refrain. You, hopefully, have work tomorrow (even after all the sweeps it’s startling to think that most everyone on Earth is diurnal, what a backwards planet) and being hammered isn’t going to ensure you keep that highly necessary source of income.

The dull roar of the bar erupts into loud shouts and the pounding of flesh against flesh. You’re out of your seat and whirled around in a matter of seconds, redirecting a stool thrown in your general area by someone too drunk to aim properly but still trying to get in on the action. The culprit trips on spilt alcohol and stays down when he falls. You keep your defenses up as you edge further along the bar, away from the mass of bodies. The bar tender is yelling at the patrons, the majority of which are circled around the middle of the floor. 

You aren’t a fan of not being able to see the danger around you, even if the alcohol in your blood is making your head light and the edges of your vision soft. The crowd is mostly trolls, but there are a few humans, too, and you wedge yourself between them, shouting and spitting the whole way in order to see the action. 

The lighting in the bar keeps the walls and corners dark, hanging lamps shining circular light rings down the length of the room. The fight is directly in one of these halos, a table flipped and shoved to the side to make room. A human is in the process of grappling with an olive blooded troll. You see another green on the floor clutching his nose and a teal trying to sneak up behind. The trolls are all about the same height, broad shouldered and barrel chested. The olive has blocks for fists and the green’s face is a collection of brutish plains that have been rearranged several times. The teal is sharp edged and reminds you a bit too much of someone.

The human is taller than them, and his shirt does nothing to conceal the thick muscles bunching and stretching with his every movement. His fists are gloved, his eyes hidden behind gaudy shades and his lusus bright hair is tucked half-hazardly under a hat. He wholly captivates you, and you blame it on the bar’s atmosphere lighting for washing his skin in rich golds. 

The human shoves a knee into the olive’s stomach and whirls around so fast you swear he disappears for a second to catch the teal’s fist in his square hand. He pulls down and swings with his right arm, snapping the teal’s head around and splitting open her cheek. She catches herself fast and rams her head upwards, horns barely scratching the human’s shades as he jerks backwards. 

The green has pushed himself up to aim a disastrous kick (in the drunken mobility sense, not in that it’s actually dangerous. Past-you could have dodged that kick sweeps before you received even the most cursory military training) at the human who is forced to let go of the teal’s hand to block. He cocks his arm back but before he can swing the olive grabs it and yanks him into an attempted headlock. The human throws his weight forward, flipping the olive into the green. While he’s centering his weight again the teal throws her own punch, hand tinged with her blood where she wiped it from her cheek. He dodges, but gets thrown off balance and stumbles and the olive flails on the ground in just the right way to catch the human’s stumbling feet. 

The human is on the fast track to falling but the teal reaches out and grips his shirt reeling him in so she can punch him or mock him or whatever it is she wants to do. He swings with the momentum and whips his head forward, and you can hear it impact on her face. She howls, and backs up, clutching at her nose, teal seeping through her claws. 

The green and olive blood shove each other back up and are on the human without pause, fists flying. He moves easily, body obviously moving on muscle memory. The human trains a lot, you think. It’s obvious by the way he shifts his weight, and moves with the flow of the fight, in the pale lines that you can see on his arms, the set of his scruffed jaw. His mouth is twisted down in a displeased sneer, and sweat shines on his golden skin like highlights. 

Your heart thumps hard behind it’s thoracic cage, and your teeth worry your lip. Behind you, the bar tender is hissing into a phone, probably requesting police assistance and it’s definitely time for you to scram. Getting picked up at the scene of a bar fight isn’t something you need. Your boss already hates you, no need to give him an excuse to fire you if you don’t turn up at ass o’ clock in the morning because you were detained. 

Whelp. You’d better drop a tip and leave. Stumble your way down the sidewalk, drop your keys then kick open your door. Trip over the minimal shit you own, gaze forlornly at your phone and weigh the pros and cons of texting Sollux again before you collapse in the ‘cupe only to be woken too early for dreams to even think to form. 

The human plows it’s fist into the olive’s face and you’re pretty sure all three of them are going to have broken or dislocated noses by the way you hear it crunch without so much the resistance of a cracker. 

You roll your shoulders and set them as straight as you can. Your first step is wobbly, but you compensate quickly and lurch into the fray, intercepting a fist and throwing the green into the polished wood floor.

“Okay, back the fuck up, make your support struts stumble three steps back, you may all take a breather and calm the fuck down,” You shout over the din of the fight. The teal catches your gaze and pauses, and when the green rolls back to his feet he’s focused on you too. The olive and the human are still going at it, the assholes. Actually breaking them apart is really fucking ashen though. 

“Fuckers, I require your attention! As miniscule as I am sure it is I only need your focus for a second so I can rock your world and benevolently extend the hand of forewarning and the exquisite gift of pre-chewed school feeds so noble you’ll drop to your knees thanking me as your saviour! For what you peons ask? For dropping it on your pans that the police are on their way and you may want to skedaddle like the spineless amoebae your ancestors spent billions of years of evolution trying to deviate from.”

The teal and greenie take the hint and so does half of the bar’s clientele but the olive asshole and the human are still horn-locked. Well, about as horn locked as a troll can be with a human who doesn’t, actually, by virtue of being human, have horns. You duck under the olive’s arm and latch your claws around the human’s wrist (warm, thick, with square bones and hair dusting it). He startles, and pulls his arm from your grasp, which you anticipated along with the stab of anxiety. There’s a delicate balance between violence and pacification and this human is huge and trained and dangerous with no connections to you at all. Your hind brain helpfully informs you that you probably couldn’t take him in a fight in your current condition.

You ignore it though, because you’re drunk and you’ve stared at your own death in the murder-bright eyes of an unstable troll bent on ripping your pump biscuit from your chest possibly without any sharp instruments and you prevailed. You are Karkat mother fucking Vantas and you have been told that you are something of a natural at this. You take his wrist again, while the olive troll realizes his sudden abandonment by his backup and absconds, and instead of pulling away the human relaxes and leans his weight back, taking on a faux relaxed pose. You tug him towards the doors.

“Didn’t you hear my glorious word vomit, the police are coming, we should get out of here,” you tell his raised eyebrow and your own reflection in the black glass of his shades.

He laughs, and it’s like a bag of gravel tumbling down a hill, before he says: “Yeah, sure, lead on, kid," His voice sounds like the apple pies that your neighbor bakes smell, and you’re pretty sure you don’t have synesthesia that works like that, or at all, and you blame Terezi for the simile. 

Your claws are still curled loosely around his wrist and he let’s you lead him outside and onto the sidewalk. You almost don’t notice it at first, you’re too busy greedily soaking up the tactile information your fingertips relay to your brain. He’s warm, on par with you—no one runs hotter than you—and his weird human body hair tickles the pads of your fingers. One of your claws is resting on the pale line of a scar that runs over his forearm and slips under the black leather of his gloves. 

He isn’t in danger of tipping off the sidewalk but he does have a shake to his step. If you hadn’t just seen the grace of him fighting you wouldn’t have caught it, but someone who fights like that should be able to walk a lot smoother. He’s drunk. But you are, too, and right now you kind of don’t give a fuck.

He follows, and you open your sqauwkblister to say something when he stops moving forward and hovers a hand over his stomach with a displeased grimace.

"Don’t feel too well,” he huffs out. You recognize the look on his face.

“Shit, shit, c'mere,” you order and pull him into one of the alleys. He stumbles over to a trashcan, finally taking his arm back and almost toppling the bin with the force he removes the lid with. You hear his retching as he buries his face in the can and your nose wrinkles with the smell of it and the decomposing trash. His hair isn’t long so you can’t hold it for him, but you can settle your hand on his shaking back. 

It’s familiar, being in a dark alleyway, patting the back of a stranger hurling into a dirty trashcan. But this time you’re drunk, not in mortal danger, and you have no delusions of movie perfect romance to shatter. The human clears his throat and stands back up when you take your hand away from his shoulder. He spits into the trash can and takes a step before his skin takes on that sick hue again.

“Hey, shhh, just sit down here. We can wait a bit while your stomach settles,” you nudge him towards the wall and he let’s you help control his slide onto the alley floor. You’re pretty sure you’re going to regret whatever it is you just sat in, but in this moment you’re happy enough to lean against his side and feel his breathing.

“Can’t believe I’m sitting in a goddamned alley with a kid I don’t know holding back my hair as I chuck it into the nastiest garbage receptacle in a fifteen block radius,” The guy says. 

He cuts himself off with his hand, pressing it to his mouth as if trying to hold back another wave of nausea. His eyebrows wrinkle, pushing the nameless patch of skin between them into a furrow nearly hidden behind his shades. You lift your hand slowly, finger pads first, ostensibly to feel the temperature of his face. His glowing skin looks flushed, under the sheen of sweat and in this lighting.

He tenses as your hand gets nearer but doesn’t move away, and it’s only when you touch the slick band of skin on his forehead that he relaxes minutely. Your blood feels too warm in your veins for a moment, and you carefully smooth out the wrinkle while keeping your claws from touching him.

You snip them, your claws. Keep them rounded and blunt like the rest of you because it’s easier that way. Humans don’t like claws or horns or fangs that can obviously gore them, and you’ve had many a friend have a difficult time getting employed legally just because of that (not taking into account most of their horrible and grating personalities but that’s something else entirely). You guess you got lucky in that regard.

It makes it easier, to be gentle as you press your fingers into the tense muscles on his forehead, anyway. You let your hand drift to his temple, down to the arm of his shades and he tenses again. This time you can identify it. He doesn’t want the sun shields to come off. You draw your hand back because he’s a bit warm but it’s not anything to worry about, and that’s all your hand was doing there anyway. That was a completely platonic concerned good civilian course of action that you just did and it had no ulterior motives at all. In fact you might say it had none of the ulterior motives. He relaxes against the grimy alley wall and quirks a grin at you. 

“How much did you have to drink?” You ask, not entirely sure it matters. He shrugs in answer and you purse your lips at him. He does that strange huffing laugh thing humans tend to do.

“Enough. Was feeling a bit cramped in the apartment, decided to get out for a minute," He looks at the sky, you presume because his face lifts upwards and you still can’t see his eyes unless you tilt your face and scrunch your shoulders in a totally conspicuous way so you don’t bother trying. "Might be that I’ve been out for more than a minute.”

You snort and he looks back at you. You feel the need to share your thoughts so you do.

“That’s such a beautiful deduction I will need to spontaneously discover a way to force myself back in time to record it for posterity and then submit it to the Universe’s Collection of Intelligence. It will be displayed in the gilded halls of the museum and become the centerpiece for the masses to gaze upon and learn from. It will be in the wing dedicated to Stating the Obvious subsection It Wasn’t Even Under Your Sniff Node it Was Taped To Your Face and Written in Red Chuckle Fuck. You will get all the awards and medals for observing and stating such an obvious fact that anyone who actually couldn’t tell that is in fact such a moron space would double in on itself just to suck that singularity back up it’s disgusting dripping ovarian depositor in an attempt to atone for inflicting the universe with stupidity of that level.”

He stares at you.

And keeps staring at you.

You’re feeling the strings of regret that usually spawn when past you lets his idiot box start flapping its maw like anything he has to say isn’t completely awful at every moment. Then the human laughs at you, grinning wide with his blunt human teeth showing. You hiss as he guffaws all over the place, digging your nails into the your palm as he wheezes. Objectively, that laugh is as gorgeous as the feelings twisting in your gut are acidic and corrosive.

“If you’re finished disregarding any shred of dignity you have left by vomiting it up your protein chute and letting the gross globs of your disdain spatter everywhere–”

He waves at you, and then pats your arm which startles you enough to stop your words in your throat. He’s still laughing, but he’s obviously trying to stifle the chuckles with weird choking sounds probably a result from different vocal structures and the inability to just close your wind tube up at will. When he’s quieted down enough to stop choking on his laughter he breathes in a deep sigh and wipes a finger under his shades. His hand stays on your arm and you keep quiet.

“Oh man wow, I needed that, you’re a riot, kid,” then after a pause, “I wasn’t exactly expecting to stay out this long.”

It’s a hook cast into the water with barely any bait attached at all and you still bite on it, snap your teeth so hard they could shatter. 

“What kept you out then?" Your voice is still gruff from your corrosive insides squirming around like your abdomen is suddenly the birthing caverns and your guts are thousands of grubs fighting to expel themselves out of any one of your orifices, possibly all of them at once.

He doesn’t say anything, for a long while. His face sets itself into this impassive expression and all the lines settle like this is what he usually looks like. A blank mask: thoughts hidden by the black of his triangular sun shields and the straight line of his lips. It’s almost a complete inverse of a painted on grin, grey on gray, giving the illusion of seeing what’s happening when it’s just a show to give time for him to roll his thoughts around in his head. You resist the urge to reach out and remove the barriers, to push his mouth into an upwards curve. 

Then he tilts his face away from you, points it at the opposite wall while his shoulders slump into a half circle. He sighs through his nose and tightens his lips like they’re trying to keep whatever he wants to say locked tight. You want to encourage him to say something, to talk to you. His hand is still on your arm. You cover it with your own, offering your presence but trying not to shove it on him like you’re prone to doing.

"Got two kids to look after, right.” He starts and your brows shoot up, you can feel them speed hiking up your face and trying to crawl into your hairline, “They’re good kids, don’t know how they turned out that way but they are.

"They’re a handful though, the both of them. It’s been awhile since we’ve all been under one roof and I got used to remembering how they were when they were little and used to need me for everything even when they didn’t want to ask for anything.

"Now it’s been a couple of years since either of them has dealt with me and they’re used to doing things on their own. And it’s not like I smother them. I don’t go for the whole helicopter mom thing when there’s no one around to appreciate the irony, but they’re all still hella wired when we’re all in the same room together.

"Used to be we could just strife this shit out but they both avoid the shit out of me whenever they think that’s what I’m trying to do. I mean, I hate to say it 'cause I lived through that shit and two teenage Striders is approximately fifty seven percent more difficult to manage than your run of the mill teenager, but I miss it when they were younger.”

You’re blinking, probably resembling some kind of gape fish, but you struggle through your memories of when you still lived with your lusus and how you’d act if you somehow were impossibly reunited with it to come up with a reply. Before you can come up with something he interrupts your thoughts.

“Yeah, that was great, cool as dry ice in Antarctica I’m going to–” and he throws himself at the trash bin again before he retches. You wonder if it’s still the alcohol or the intensity of his feelings. You edge towards him and pat his back while listening to his coughs.

“They’re at your apartment? Your human wigglercendants?" You ask when he stops spitting. He nods. You bite your lip before continuing because, wow, talk about forward. You heard once that you never get anywhere without taking a step first, so you take a step and by step you mean you swan dive straight into the gaping maw of the horror terrors and pray that you’re wearing scuba gear.

"Want to stay the night at my place then? It’s not too far, it’s a dump but what place in this sun dried husk of a city isn’t, it’s like it is actually a sentient being that strives on the putrid scent of unwashed and wallowing citizens packed together tighter than a nookworm up a highblood’s frozen seed flap, sprinkled with the tears of the festering pan shattered dreams of those sucked into this black hole–” his eyebrow is arched and you’re sure he’d be laughing if he wasn’t hunched over his vomit, “and your wigglers can take care of themselves if they’ve learned even a fraction of anything you’ve taught them.”

His other eyebrow joins the first and he looks contemplative. He continues looking contemplative while you notice a smear on his lip. You pull your sleeve over your thumb and swipe at it. He makes a noise as you push at his lip, but you don’t see his expression as you’re currently looking very hard at his shoulder with nonchalant focus; his shirt is very high quality and such a precise shade of white that it’s so interesting and captivating and no, your face isn’t red at all. 

“Yeah, sure. Ain’t like I’m not already going to Hell. YOLO," He says when you pull your hand from his mouth.

"What,” you say. And, “Did you just.”

“Yeah, babe, I just. Your speech was just so rousing it demands reciprocation. Lead on my knight, this maiden knows not where you dwell and requires about three gallons of water." You try not to face palm when he stands and you scramble up after him. 

You manage to maneuver him out of the alley and away from the bar before the policeradicators—nope, just police here, you forget sometimes—arrive. You distantly hear the sirens but you’re far enough away that they don’t matter, especially with the human’s weight leaning on your shoulder. When you first followed him out of the alley he seemed adamant to walk by himself, a foot to your side. That smarted, because you’re taking him home and he didn’t even bother with touching you but if there’s anything that’s transparent on his face it’s the struggle to keep his pride seated firmly around his shoulders like an imaginary cape of dignity.

Too bad, asshole, that hoofbeast escaped the stable the exact moment he spewed fermented vomit and also his problems all over you like his waste management valve was having unscheduled palpitations. After a few minutes of him stumbling off the cemented walking strip and you pulling him back on he seems to have embraced the value of having a sentient, intelligent if reluctant walking stick at his side because he’s draped himself over you, a heavy, slightly uncomfortable heated coat in the muggy night.

His solid weight keeps you grounded when your brain tries to float away though. The skin of his neck is close enough that, with a slight turn of your head, his pulse flutters against your nose. You’re half carrying him, the way he’s thrown his arm across your shoulders and back, bent over to tuck his face against your hair. The sharp edges of his shades occasionally bump against your horns, but he always adjusts his face before they can scratch the keratin.

You talk on your way to your dump. Mumble words under your breath as you navigate the grid of downtown streets and alleys inebriated while carrying a drunk cholerbear like it is your life’s mission. You talk about Sollux and how he’s not texting you back and you’re kind of worried for the dumpass because he literally cannot take care of himself without outside intervention, and he’s not even your problem, he’s got himself a moirail and a matesprit, neither of which really care for your continued badgering. You talk about your job, your boss’s narrowed eyes whenever you mess something up enough to inconvenience but not enough to warrant anything more than a conversation, how he’s obviously very upset with how you constantly toe the line but never do anything to get fired though you’re pretty sure that’ll happen soon enough.

You worry over what you’ll do when you do get fired. It’s a shit job but it’s better than anything you had before including your brief stint in the military and without it you won’t be able to make rent. It’s also slowly sucking your soul out with every hour that passes that has you scurrying around carrying shit for people who sneer at you when you show up.

At some point you mention your lusus and how it’s back on Alternia, hopefully picking out a new wiggler though you know, logically that it’s been culled for being an errant piece of shit that gravitates towards mutant genes. You might admit that you miss the asshole, and also your hive planetside and everything you owned that you couldn’t take with you, and that you had another sweep before you actually had to vacate the planet.

“Why’d you leave then, if you could’ve stayed?” He asks, his hand tightening on your shoulder when you step over an uneven part of the sidewalk.

“I’ve got fucked over genes. It’s technically illegal to cull anyone over that now, since the new laws and treaty agreements with your weirdly benevolent human coalition, but nothing on Alternia is monitored as much as your human government thinks it should be. It was either stay with my lusus like a needy pupa wanna-be for another sweep risking escalated threats of violence upon my person or book it to the military as soon as I could, learning actual defense techniques instead of flailing in my respite block like a tool that found a sickle, and while my mutation still wasn’t a blatant invitation in the face of every hemocastist asshole there is.”

You got in a fight in the middle of your lawn ring, and the asshole strifing you managed to draw blood. Both of you had frozen but you’d recovered faster and barricaded yourself in your hive. You lived in a midblood area, you don’t know how you managed to get space there and you regretted it when your secret managed to be spilled in one glorious moment of ineptitude that managed to out-shine every other stupid thing past-you did. Your hive was pelted with everything from old eggs to fucking molotovs (you had a hose though, thank you semi-aquatic custodian, and their aim was preposterous) and your lusus was forced to go out and drag back supplies like you’d regressed to being a grub incapable of defending itself, coming back with bruised carapace more often then not. Kids were mean, inherently, and you’ve never liked them.

Your eyes were still wiggler silver when you led your lusus out of your house and kicked it in the general direction of the ocean. The stupid thing had tried following you back several times before you managed to bribe it into staying with a box full of roe cubes and then running in the opposite direction while it was distracted. Lusus were evolved into caring for a wiggler until its death or the wiggler’s departure and even though it might be confused for a while, it wouldn’t miss you after it realized you’d left. It’d be drawn to the nearest birthing cavern to look for a replacement wiggler if it didn’t get caught by predators or other trolls first. Consequently, you also felt absolutely no attachment to it at all, and were completely justified in kicking it out while you abandoned the planet like it was diseased.

Blood typing was mandatory for exit from the planet, and you meticulously planned when you would offer your arm with the arrival of a human ambassador team pinning all your hopes on them being able to stop your inevitable culling. It worked, to your complete and utter bafflement and their visit lasted long enough for you to get proper training, enough to intimidate your fellow culldets, and long enough for your presence to be recorded in the books despite any stalling made by the overseeing trolls, therefore making it extremely difficult to just cull you and pretend you never existed. Suspicious deaths were actually investigated by humans, like they were actually invested in enforcing their weird no-cull laws.

“Shit, kid, how old _are_ you?” The human asks.

“Eleven,” you answer and he looks at you with shock on his face.

“What no way? Years?” He asks with bafflement in his voice and his face tilted down at you as if studying you in a new light. You wrinkle your nose and try to glare at him.

“Fuck no, stupid, inferior human measures of time. _Sweeps_ asshole. Eleven sweeps.”

“Oh,” He says.

“That’s… twenty two? Twenty three? Or something in your paltry human years,” you add for his convenience.

“Oh,” he says again, this time with a bit more comprehension. And then, “Damn,” and then, “Well, it’s not like I’m going to hell any worse than before,”

“What are spewing back there?” You ask, because this is the second time he’s said that.

“You’re like, Dave’s age. Almost, maybe,”

“That explains everything completely, good job,”

“He’s one of my kids,” He replies, like that comparison further explains everything completely, good job. You ignore him in favor of dragging him up the steps to the apartment you live in and rattling at the door like a drunken monkey, which, you suppose, you resemble much more now than you usually do. You’re about to reach into your pocket for the keys when he does it for you, square hand absently patting at your pockets until he finds the one with the hard edges of your keys etched into them. You feel the blush in your face as he wriggles his fingers into the pocket to reach them.

“So now I know the name of one of your wards, great. Do I have to meet both of them before I get to know your title or is that courtesy a thing humans don’t do when they hookup with strangers after they save you from a bar fight?” You ask after he hands you the keys and you kick open your door.

“What about you, babe, you haven’t exactly wooed me with the dashing displays of manners and gentlemanly-ness,”

“Fuck you, I was waiting for you to ask, or something,” You shrug him off in your living room before you backtrack to lock your front door, drop your keys off somewhere and toe off your shoes, “It’s Karkat Vantas, asswipe,” you announce when you walk back.

He looks out of place in your tiny apartment. Everything around him is grey and neutral, framing him with a bland empty background that brings out his color and makes him seem bigger than he actually is.

“You can call me Bro, everyone does,” He answers, before flopping onto your old, abused couch like he owns the place. He settles down and looks at you, somehow both expectant and nervous under his shades and passive face. You shrug off your jacket and toss it in a corner before hovering awkwardly in the door frame. He looks more at home on your couch than you do on a good night.

“You thirsty or something?” He raises an eyebrow at you and smirks.

“Nah, had enough to drink at the bar. You probably did to.” He adds, “Come here,” like an after thought, patting the couch cushion at his side.

It’s not a pile, but you don’t actually have one of those. You perch yourself on the edge of the seat, suddenly nervous and second guessing yourself. It wasn’t cold outside, but the walk chased off the heavier buzz you’d had and with it the confidence steadying your hand and pushing you closer to him. He lets you shift around and makes no move to touch you or to talk to you while you pick out a comfortable spot. His face is still flushed and sweaty, and you wonder, again, how much he had to drink. He doesn’t sound like he’s had a lot, but you think he has, for some reason.

“You keep bringing your kids up, why? Mammalian familial ties include the passing of genes, right? They can’t possibly look anything like me so I can’t remind you of them.”

“Go straight for the gold, why don’t you,” he laughs before looking like he’s seriously considering your question, “Well, you’re the same age as them, basically. And you’ve got that rambly metaphor thing going on.” He taps his fingers with each point, before shrugging, “I don’t actually know you, kid, I don’t have a lot of things to compare with. Must just give off the lost mutt look, makes me think of them.”

“Right.” You say in a tone that suggests you don’t believe him.

“Right,” he agrees with you.

“Right.” You say again, with an impassive look leveled at his shades.

“Okay, so I’m a bit worried about them, sue me. It’s completely ironic because they can take care of themselves.” He leans back into the couch and you congratulate yourself for getting somewhere.

“What’s irony even have anything to do with anything? They’re your direct genetic descendants, and you’re a mammal. You’re pretty much evolutionarily obligated to be worried about them, even if the biological drive to look after and raise your own spawn is completely backwards and and vastly inferior to basically every other system of reproduction available.”

“Of course. But what makes Striders so special is that they aren’t so fucking obvious about it. I’ve got an image to maintain, and unironically following them around asking if they’re doing okay and whether they need any help is not actually a part of that intricately designed and meticulously maintained image.” He crosses his arms.

“And they react like a bunch of ungrateful wigglers whenever you bring up your totally valid ancestorlusus concerns,”

“Not as such,” He replies and you make a questioning sound, “It’s more like, I don’t bring up these concerns because they’re capable enough to take care of themselves and those concerns are completely invalid and also stupid. They’ve been living fine by themselves for a couple years now, and nothing’s caught on fire or been damaged beyond repair. They’re totally ready to be kicked out of the nest, except I didn’t even kick them out they dove off the branch of their own volition and flew to the next available forest with nary a glance.”

“Maybe they’re trying to show you that they’ve acknowledged whatever lessons you gave them. You make them sound strong and independent and less likely to dive onto a culling fork than average. You obviously did a good job raising them,” You’re basically spewing bullshit now, because, wow. What even are familial bonds and how does this work.

“Of course I raised them right.” He scoffs, “It’s more like, the nest is suddenly really big and when they come to visit it feels a bit less empty,” He rests his chin on his hand propped up on the arm of the couch.

“You’re lonely,” You say, with sudden insight,

“Like fuck I am. I’m totally and completely occupied with my various pursuits of passion and also I am extremely glad they’re out of my hair, the brats.”

“Look, you raised those brats, you’ve spent sweeps catering to their needs and having them burrow into your life like some kind of parasitic gut worm that professed its need for you. They wouldn’t be where they are now if it wasn’t for you! Spending that long with anyone would build up some kind of system of codependency and routine and then suddenly they tear themselves away from you like you’re a cancer they’ve got to get rid of by amputation and you think it’s weird to feel a bit lonely and thrown out like last week’s trash just because that’s what happens in life? Newsflash, it’s completely appropriate to miss things you had a part in and also when you barely get any time to say goodbye.” You might sound a bit bitter, at the end there. By the way he turns to look at you, he probably noticed.

“You sound like you got an issue with that yourself,” He says.

“I’m not a lusus,” you respond, “So of course I don’t have any issues like that. If I was a lusus though, I’d probably feel the same way.”

“You don’t have to be a… lusus,” he feels the word out while he says it, but manages to pronounce it correctly, “to have abandonment issues, kid,”

“Stop calling me kid, I already told you my name,” you sneer. He’s right though.

“You said that you left your lusus earlier than most?” He prompts.

“It’s not that. I was completely prepared and knew what I was doing when I sent it away, and I was operating under the knowledge that we’d both be better off separating when we did. My lusus was just too stupid to understand that I was, in fact, capable of making rational decisions concerning my own safety. Besides, it’d be more accurate to say I’d abandoned it, not the other way around.” You remember the concerned tilt of its head when you tried to push it away from you and the questioning clicks of its mandibles when you kept trying to walk away from it. At your age, you were supposed to take care of your lusus, it was probably totally dumbfounded that you’d renounced your obligation, though it should’ve expected something like that from you. You are incapable of doing anything correctly.

“Right, because being forced by society to leave your guardian completely exempts you from having feelings,” Bro says.

“I have feelings,” you reply, “They’re just not about my lusus; I’m not a whiny grub lamenting the evening of my life and how much better it used to be. It sucked back then and it continues to suck now. But just because I miss my lusus doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the fact that it was exponentially worse back then and that I’ve had an inordinate amount of good luck lately.”

“Kid, just because it’s the right thing to do doesn’t make it any less shitty,”

“Yeah, okay,” You admit, because he actually looks concerned, with a slightly down turned mouth and worried eyebrows.

There’s a lull in your conversation, and he ends up asking for a glass of water. You get one for him and one for you and settle back down by his side, consciously a bit closer than before. You swallow the last of your reservations with the cool water and relax into him, letting his heat sink into you. He shifts a bit to put his arm around the back of the couch, not touching you but letting you lean against him anyways.

“You’re really warm,” you mumble into his side, and you can feel his laughter.

“Yeah, Strider’s run hot. It’s to balance our incredible cool factor because if we were as chill on the outside as we are on the inside we’d reach absolute zero and everything around us would immediately freeze and die.”

“What a load,” you answer, and then, “You sound like you’re feeling less prone to being sick again,”

“Hmm,” He agrees.

You can hear his heart beat against his ribs, a bit fast but steady and soothing in it’s rhythm. You want to put your hand over it, because it’s alien and also his. You want to trace the pulse up to the point under his jaw where it flutters against his skin, but you don’t because you’ve been reaching out and touching him this entire time and he hasn’t complained about it, but he hasn’t touched you either, except for in the alley. You wonder if he actually likes touching or if he’s just tolerating it because he doesn’t have anyone to jam with.

That’d be a surprise. He’s beautiful, and he’s littered with scars and calluses and has this brooding air to him that should have everyone lined up trailing after his diamond. He’s drunk and still has a pretty good control on his movements and words so you think that sober he’d display a prowess that’s both impressive and attractive. And when he gets all still, when his face closes off and he hides behind a blank slate your pity gland twists in on itself. It’s like his default reaction to emotion is to run from it, and isn’t that a fucking shame. You’ve seen and heard and felt his laugh and it’s pretty goddamn gorgeous and fuck anyone who’d taught him to hide that part of himself.

And obviously he’s a wreck; he’s wearing those shitty pointy glasses and fingerless gloves. You know someone else who wears shitty glasses and fingerless gloves and he’s such a pathetic mess he’s tamed the wildest person you know. And he’d been in a fight with three trolls, drunk enough to throw up the moment the climate changed, yet still handing them their collective asses like it hadn’t even been a work out.

In fact, the only reason he’s here, in your apartment is probably because he _is_ drunk off his ass and a bit lonely. Maybe his moirail is out of town. That’d make him pretty despicable, actually, and good. That just means you don’t have to feel like your diamond is getting stomped on whenever he leaves. You just have to feel like a sleazy douche with a chisel tapping away at someone else’s metaphorical gem casing.

You draw your knees up to your chest and curl around them while trying to convince yourself that Bro is an awful person who cheats on his quadrants without qualm and isn’t really deserving of the way your skin tingles where it wants to be touched. Of how much you want to pull him closer and run your fingers over the lines of his face and help the muscles in his jaw and around his eyes relax. Definitely not of how much you want his arms around you, pulling you into a hug and reminding you that you aren’t actually a piece of personified shit and you do actually exist and people can actually see you and might want to interact with you sometimes, occasionally.

“You alright, kid? Not gonna get sick on me are you?” Bro asks, startling you out of your slump.

“What? No. I’m fine,”

“Good, this is kinda nice. Gotta admit though, this is pretty different from what I’d thought I’d be doing when we got here,” He admits.

“What’d you think was going to happen?”

“Well, a lot less talking for one thing, and a bit more smooching maybe,” He says.

“What?” You basically screech, and you can feel your mouth fall open, “Are you completely pan addled, what even kind of troll do you think I am?” You push yourself away from him, scowling at his face and his surprised eyebrows and the disbelieving tilt of his lip. “I’m not some quadrant smearing asshole who prays on drunk dipshits during bar fights! What the fuck! Do you even have a functional brain hiding behind those pointless sun shields or are you literally just a walking body? How can you even breathe and make noise out of your mouth at the same time, you’re so thought deficient you’ve probably lowered the stability of every living creature in this complex just by existing in this moment.” You snarl at him, lifting your lip and baring your fangs.

“Woah,” He holds his hands up, placating, “It wasn’t an attack on your character, kid—Karkat. It’s just, usually when people ask me to go home with them they’re expecting something a little different than sitting on a couch and cuddling,”

You sneer at him, “That wasn’t what I was doing,” you hiss.

“No, hey, I know that. It’s pretty obvious, on retrospect, okay, I respect that,” He keeps his hands up, soothing, and you relax just a bit.

“You weren’t really expecting that either,” you state, but the question in your tone still reaches him because he smirks.

“Kid, I’ve got whiskey dick. ’s not like I could get it up even if I wanted to. I was just gonna apologize and then crash on your couch.”

You snort a laugh out before you can help yourself, “You asshole!”

“Yeah, pretty much,” He smirks, before lowering his hands just a bit, “You cool, not gonna bite me or anything?”

“Pfft, no—hey!” He reaches out and slings his arm around your shoulder, pulling you closer to him. Your face heats up, and you tense your shoulders up around your ears as you make a reactionary hiss to the sudden movement, “I said I wasn't—“

“Yeah, I know, but the cuddles are kind of fucking awesome, kid, ain’t gonna lie there,” He says and his fingers flex on your shoulder a bit, less like he wants to remind you they’re there and more like he’s making himself stop from pulling you closer. Your breath catches and you hide your face in his side as you turn into him carefully laying your arm across his abdomen. You feel it tighten and then relax with his sigh, “You’re a good kid, kid. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got a shitty life or fucked up genes, you’re a good kid.”

You stiffen.

He kind of awkwardly pets your hair and you stifle the hitch in your breath as you press your face into his ribs while blinking rapidly. You bite your lip and grip him harder, pulling yourself into him in an attempt to stop yourself from acknowledging whatever it is you’re feeling. Bro takes the hint and wraps his other arm around you, petting your hair at the nape of your neck and rubbing your shoulder. When you have enough control over your mouth you attempt to return the favor.

“You, too,” you mutter into his shirt, and you feel his hold on you tense, “You’re pretty good at that lusus shit and the only reason worth contemplating for your spawn to be stand offish is that they’re scared you won’t be able to see how well you’ve raised them if they don’t rub your face in it with all the vigorous finesse of a new woofbeast owner determined to train it of its habit of defecating all over the good furniture.” He stays still for a second and you’re worried you said the wrong thing before he lets his hand relax and he laughs.

“You have the best way of phrasing things,” he says. You look up at his smirking mouth and you pap his face with the flat of your hand in retaliation, “What?” He says, and you see his nose wrinkle, “Ow.”

The warmth around your shoulders removes itself so he can tap your nose back and this time you wrinkle your sniff node at his utter lack of finesse, and still despite that your pump biscuit manages to flop over in detestable defeat without so much as a paltry fight. You still snort at him in an attempt to shake your heart back into beating and then his face kind of melts into an uncertain smile and at this angle you don’t have to adjust to see the shadows of his eyes at all, and all of your organs squish into themselves and put in a petition to just stop functioning all together if it’d let you have this moment forever.

“Shoosh,” You whisper and take his hand into yours, unfolding his blocky fingers and spreading them open palm up. The black leather of his gloves is well worn and well taken care of and you trace the seams where they meet his skin, turning his palm over to graze lightly at the golden hair sprouting at his knuckles. His nails are blunt and you can see pale scars running over his knuckles and in the spaces revealed by the gloves. You let yourself relax entirely into the feeling of him as you lift his hand to your own face, and press his fingers onto your skin.

Your heart stutters, and you let your eyes fall shut as you guide his hand down the bridge of your nose, across your brow, gently pressing his fingers against your face. You swallow, heavily when he moves his fingers himself, running them over your cheeks, following the rough hair of your eyebrows, dragging them up your temples. He moves in gentle half circles, lightly pushing at the places prone to wrinkling in a scowl.

He turns you slightly, so you lay back against his lap instead of craning your neck up to look at him, and he lets his fingers wander all over your face. He dances them into your hair and scratches lightly around your horns and runs them lightly across your lips and you hum contentedly as he explores you.

You think he asks a question, but you’re spiraling into a warm abyss as he draws a finger up your horn and back down. You’re faintly aware of him laughing.

  
  


You wake up warm and sedated, the comforting weight and silence of being encased in slime settled over you. When you open your eyes, green coats your vision and you sluggishly breathe through the thick sopor. Your head pops out of your 'cupe when you drag yourself out, and your body becomes weighted down with slime-damp clothes wrapping around your limbs.

Usually you don’t go to sleep in your 'cupe with your clothes on, you hate it when they get slicked up and goopey, and it takes at least thirty minutes of vigorous scrubbing to clean them. You weren’t drunk enough last night to have an excuse for not changing out of your clothes. You don’t even remember dragging yourself into the 'coon, you remember—

There’s some rustling outside your block and you stumble your way out the door and into the common area making a racket as you do. When you pop your head out, you see Bro looking at you, a bowl in his hand. His eyebrows show over his shades and you stare at the place his eyes are probably set into his head behind them until one of those brows lowers.

“You’ve got,” he gestures with the bowl, “Slime all over you.” You redden and slam your door shut.

When you venture back out his has his face in the thermal hull, rooting around, bowl abandoned on one of the counters. He peeks back out at you as you step back into common area before shutting the hull door and leaning back on the counter.

“You got any grub around here, kid?” He asks.

“Stop calling me kid, you know my name,” You say as you drag a chair to the counter. You see him stiffen out of the corner of your eye and you only notice because you’re really close to him right now. You turn to glare at him, putting your hands on your hips. “You do remember my name right.”

“Yeah, about that, kid, a lot of everything from last night is fuzzy,” He leans even more casually and slips a hand in his pocket. Now that you’re really looking you can see that impassive mask has settled back over his face, and goddamn, that is depressing.

One night stand, you remind yourself, and you climb onto the chair. You can’t keep the defeat slouch out of your shoulders though.

“What exactly did we get up to anyway, 'cause, it’s not like you ain’t cute or anything but you’re not exactly the type I go for when I get smashed.” You see his face tilt toward you as you reach up and open the cupboard, stretching to reach inside it, “There wasn’t a condom around anywhere and I did wake up in my clothes but, you know, better safe than sorry,”

You sputter at the tail end of his sentence, and your heart sinks as well because, wow, you guess he wasn’t kidding at all last night. Your sudden movement unbalances the cheap chair and you windmill your arms, trying to center it again, almost resigned to falling when a large warm hand splays against your back. You tense up then relax as he steadies you, and your heart falls more because he doesn’t even remember you from last night and he’s literally got your back. You are going to explode, this is completely unfair.

“Do you remember the bar fight?” You ask as you dig around the cabinet. It takes a moment before he affirms, “And I dragged you away before the cops got there,” you see him nod, because you’re facing him with your arm as far back as it can go.

“And you threw up, twice, which probably should have told me you were too drunk to be following a stranger home, but I’m such an asshole I didn’t even stop to think about what it’d look like when you woke up in the morning in a stranger’s hive without remember what happened the night before, god damn am I an exploitative creep or what. And you even fucking put me in my recuperacoon, what kind of person even does that. There is no way I can even consider being deserving of that kind of treatment, I haven’t done a single thing for the universe to reward me with someone like you deciding to be such a good fucking person—“

“Oh, huh, your ranting is kind of jogging my memories. We talked about my brothers didn’t we?” He interrupts you.

You blink at him, pulling back from the cupboard clutching a half empty box of human flat cake breakfast confectionery. He holds out his hand and you give it to him, and he lets you use his arm as leverage to lower yourself off the chair. Bro opens the thermal hull again and takes out the liquid dairy product and sets it on the counter. You kneel to get a mixing bowl and pan from the storage unites under the counters.

“Yeah, a bit, if 'brothers’ means the direct genetic relatives currently staying at your hive and who drove you out to drink in the first place,” you answer as you plop the mixing bowl on the counter in front of him. He starts, like you surprised him, and his eyebrows furrow again, in a way that unsettles your palest feelings. Not that you are actively harbouring any for him. You walked into this with the complete knowledge that it was a one time thing, and also ill advised and probably stupid.

Who are you even kidding?

“You know—actually, you probably don’t,” you say, leaning away from him as casually as you can, studying the tense lines of his body, “What I said last night is still a thing that applies this morning even if you can’t remember it. You’re a good lusus to them, and if they’re anywhere half as sharp as you are they know it, too. You’re a good person all around.”

He starts pouring the mix into the bowl and adding milk without measuring either component. He doesn’t hesitate and uses such a familiar ease it suggests he’s done this exact same thing a hundred times before. When he reaches a hand out for a mixing utensil you have a whisk ready to give him.

“I actually do remember that part. Except last night you said it with a more complex analogy to dog shit.”

“Yeah, well, I have a way with words,” You shrug. You catch his lips twitch like he wants to smile. He still hasn’t yet, but at least he doesn’t look wary or as tense as he did before. “It’s the only redeemable part of my personality.”

“And I recall,” he starts, pausing in a way that pricks the hair on the back of your neck, “that I said you were a good kid.” He doesn’t look at you but you nod stiffly anyways. You stare at his hands stirring the mix in the bowl with the same finesse he was using while smashing in that teal’s nose. You’re having trouble reconciling the two images together. When he finishes mixing the bowl he lights the stove and scoots closer to you.

“I’m pleased to announce that my judgment drunk off my ass still holds when I’m hungover and hungry,” He pours a bit of the mix into the pan and holds his hand out for a spatula. You turn around to pretend to look for one in your cup of miscellaneous cooking utensils to hide your pleased smile.

He gets the breakfast flaps into a golden brown color you can never duplicate no matter how long you spend hunched over the stove trying (you know where the other half of that box went: burnt and in the trash) and he makes enough of them to pile on a plate. You look around for tree blood, but only turn up an ancient bottle of honey and some butter. He accepts both, smearing the butter onto the breakfast confectionery and warming the crystallized honey over the stove.

You both settle at your tiny dining table, plates heaped with food drizzled in honey and with glasses of liquid dairy product because you don’t own a coffee maker and also you think that coffee is disgusting and no one should drink it ever. You demolish a third of the mountain on your plate in comfortable silence. You don’t actually see him do it, but Bro eats his just as fast. You’re drinking your liquid dairy product when he decides to talk.

“So what’s the deal with your fucked up genes or whatever it was that made you skip off from your planet?”

Predictably, you spew the liquid dairy product up your nose.

Bro does not even look concerned or contrite.

“What— You can't— That’s not—“ You sputter as milk drips down your face and your eyes water. Bro holds a napkin out towards you and you snatch it out of his hand and mop your face up. “You don’t just ask a person what’s up with their fucked up genes, that is so fucking far from an appropriate topic of breakfast conversation. It is never an appropriate topic of conversation, fucking Gl'bgolyb’s honking beak, don’t you have any fucking decency?”

“You’re the one who told me.”

“I was drunk! You were drunk! That was not a conscious decision asshole!” He pats your nose with a curious look on his face.

You sit back down in your chair and blink, opening your mouth to, what. Breathe? He leans over and pats your face again, runs his fingers up your nose, an echo of what you guided him through last night. Your muscles loosen all at once and you may, quietly, let out a contented chirp. You refuse to acknowledge the sound or the fact that Bro has a tiny smile affixed to his mouth.

It’s harder to ignore the smile.

“Okay, not bringing it up again,” He says.

“Alright. Good,” You meet the general area of where his eyes should be.

You bring the fork to your mouth. He raises an eyebrow. You open your mouth. You close it again. You eye him warily but he seems content to keep from causing trouble. You put the golden fluffy cake in your mouth and start chewing.

“You know, this is the first time I’ve woken up in a stranger’s house without dicks and asses being intimately involved.”

“HOLY CONDESCE’S TITS—“ you inhale the pan baked cake crumbs in an explosion of shocked air. Your reflex tries to kick in, shutting off your airways so nothing else goes down them, but the only thing that accomplishes is disallowing you to breathe and you sputter and gasp on nothing, trying to fight down the cut off and get some air.

“Shit, kid calm down,” Bro says, and your subvocal throat clicks don’t rely on air so you can still make a warning trill at him as he leans back over the table. The threat is lost on him, and he pats your back solidly, jostling you throat a bit. “Didn’t mean to make you choke, c'mon I don’t want to do the Heimlich. Does that even work on trolls?”

He actually sounds a bit worried, which actually calms you down enough that you can forcibly unlock your throat and gulp some air. The cake crumbs burn your air tube and you think you feel some _in your nasals_ but you can breathe. Really, what more can you ask for?

“We really,” you grumble, “need to teach you proper table conversation.”

  
  


Bro has left by the time your cellphone rings impatiently. You’re cleaning the dishes with absolute focus and not in any sort of daze at all when the default incoming phone call tone alerts you. After you’ve dried your hands and flipped open the phone, you flip your shit because you are late for work.

You are _hours_ late to work.

“Shit, shit,” you curse as you answer the call and bash it to you skull, “Hello? I’m sorry I’m getting ready right now,” you yell, stumbling your way to your room to get your uniform. Your boss’s voice sounds tinny over the connection.

“I just woke up late, I forgot to—“ You stop and stare at the portable communications device in your hand.

“But I— No, I understand that, but it's— Of course there should be— I’m not a fucking idiot— Well maybe if you made a concerted effort into accommodating the schedule— Half of your night shift fall asleep on their goddamned jobs! No I’m not saying— Nocturnal is my fucking default— Fine! Fine! Fuck you, too!” You snarl and throw your phone down, stomping out of your half pulled up uniform pants.

  
  


♦♦♦

Sollux still hasn’t answered your texts.

This isn’t unexpected seeing how you haven’t texted him since the morning you got fired–and how terrible is it, that it became "the morning you were fired” instead of “the morning after the night you one-night-jammed with a human”? The answer is: very terrible but not unexpected; the universe proves its inexplicable hatred of Karkat Vantas yet again. Soon, you’re going to start demanding that the universe pay for dinner or something, what kind of troll does it think you are?–and you haven’t found the inclination to. 

You’ve been studiously searching for another job, and by studiously searching you mean you did a quick search online in between watching movies and eating ice cream and staring forlornly at the empty box of premade flat cake mix sitting on your counter like a reprimand. The cushioned group recliner has been your nightly hookup, the trip to the ablution block your walk of shame.

It’s probably not the best idea to sleep without slime but you can’t bring yourself to take your eyes off of Will Smith’s face as he teaches Kevin James how to kiss the girl of his dreams and you just don’t care enough to drag yourself to your 'cupe and dunk your head. Now that you don’t have a schedule you’ve fallen into your habit of staying up for as long as you can. You’ve told yourself that going to sleep will mean you get up faster but you can’t rationalize it to yourself if you can just stay awake and do whatever it is you want to do even if that’s watching human romantic comedies at sun high.

Your landlord is going to ask for your rent soon. You’ll be able to cover it this month, with your last check but you don’t know what you’ll do after that. It took you a long time to land that delivery job, and you aren’t looking forward to going through the process again. 

You also don’t want to get kicked out of the place. You don’t even have a fucking car, you’d be back to sleeping under benches with one eye open and probably getting wrapped up in drugs again and there is no sopor-high Gamzee to rescue you in Texas. There is no one in Texas. The people you called friends are all still on the west coast, last time you checked, and even if they aren’t you’ve lost most of their contact information. Your phone has three numbers and two of them you refuse to touch, but can’t bring yourself to delete. There’s some shameful, hopeful little part of you that wishes one of them would contact you, to apologize or yell or make inane comments about the weather, none of which you deserve or should want from either of them. 

And Sollux wouldn’t answer your texts a week ago, what would make him answer your texts now?

You stand, as Kevin James awkwardly puckers his lips and flutters his eyelashes at his redrom interest, before disregarding the sage advice Will Smith’s expert character imposed upon him. You need to pull up your adult pants, step outside and find another fucking job. Will Smith’s character messes up his usually smooth flow and endangers his chance with his redrom interest and you sit down because it’s not like you can just put that pint of ice cream back after you’ve already devoured a third of it straight from the tub. That’s just gross. You’ll pull up your adult pants tomorrow. You’ll hike them up to your armpits if you have to. 

Friday night sees you back at the bar you met Bro at, cheap beer in your hand and picking at the bowl of nuts set out. You can’t actually afford the beer, but whatever. Air conditioning is for pussies.   
You’ve been out all day looking for a job but everyone you’ve approached have said that the positions were filled or that there were none for someone with your qualifications. One helpful, if slightly condescending human adult mentioned that you should look into building a resume for yourself. What the fuck even is a resume? 

After nearly twelve hours of walking from Now Hiring sign to Help Wanted sign to Employees Needed sign and being rejected or sneered at at every turn, you have decided that it can’t possibly hurt to retire to the warm atmosphere of the bar only blocks from your hive. 

You aren’t going to get drunk, you just want your pulsing headache to go away before you have to drag yourself home and look up what a resume is and search for more job opportunities. You are not hoping to reunite with Bro, you’ve barely even thought about him at all except for the weak moments you have in the floating seconds between closing your eyes and drifting to sleep wherever you’ve found yourself at the moment. 

It is still, somehow, not really a surprise when his lean, sculpted body sits on the stool next to you. He doesn’t speak, but his shades are pointed at you when you look up, and the lighting is just so that you can make out the dull lines of his eyes slanted at you. He raises a questioning eyebrow at you, even while ordering something from the bartenderceptionist, and your shoulders relax from their tense position as if he’s finally shown up for a previously discussed date after keeping you waiting for long minutes. You don’t want to call it serendipity, because every time you do, you are treated to very definitive proof that it’s not and never was, but the timing is perfect and you so desperately want someone to allow you to talk to them, someone who would welcome it even.

“What’s a kid like you doing in a joint like this?” He asks and you sort of break.


End file.
